The private corporations that host social media sites are increasingly taking on the role of censor. We hear of new examples every day — people who express politically incorrect opinions have their Facebook and Twitter accounts suspended and their YouTube videos pulled.
The actions of these corporations do the work of repressive governments without their having to pass any unconstitutional laws. Since the companies are private providers, it’s their prerogative to implement any policies they like against “hate speech”. If you read the fine print on their “terms and conditions” pages, you’ll probably find that they are entitled to change their polices at any time without prior notice, and can basically yank your account for any reason they like, or no reason at all.
This arrangement is handy for our governments. By subcontracting out the repressive tasks, they avoid getting their hands dirty, and can continue pretending that their citizens are “free”. And it’s advantageous for the CEOs of these mega-corporations, who gain the good will of government functionaries while enhancing their own access to the corridors of power. Davos, anyone?
In a recent example from Germany, Udo Ulfkotte’s Facebook page was shut down a few days after his new book on the migration crisis, Boundlessly Criminal, was published. JLH has translated an article about what happened, and includes this introductory note:
A combination political and commercial message. What is striking is the parallel with censorship moves in this country in Facebook, Google, Twitter and even YouTube, and the history of Facebook in caving in to Chinese government demands, then Merkel’s. There is no public deal in the US, but let’s face it, everybody has the hymnal and is singing from the same page. Or, as someone with Dymphna’s gimlet eye on them might comment, “Algorithm, my posterior!”
In other words, the Internet that seemed to be an instrument to set us free from the media monopoly on fact and opinion has been swallowed up to a large extent by the so-called “social media,” whose elite seem to have breathed too deeply of the fumes given off by academe and Washington.
The translated article from Kopp Verlag Online, the website of the book’s publisher:
Facebook Bans Bestseller Author Because of His Refugee-Critical Book
by Stefan Schubert
July 5, 2016Just a few days after publication of his book critical of the government and refugees — Boundlessly Criminal: What Politicians And The Mass Media Are Concealing From Us About The Crimes Of Immigrants — Facebook banned the personal page of Udo Ulfkotte. Until then he had been posting information for his 30,000 followers on the explosive new book.
Freedom of expression is now officially no longer at home in the erstwhile “land of poets and thinkers.” And this seems to be exactly what Heiko Maas[1] had in mind from the start with his multimillion-euro censorship campaign on Facebook.
The writer Ulfkotte shared these fears with me by telephone: “It doesn’t affect just me — it’s not an ‘isolated case.’ Politically incorrect content is being removed from Facebook worldwide. No voices and no chains of communication which question the ruling elite will be tolerated.”
Udo Ulfkotte has been a thorn in the side of the powerful for a very long time. His books like Bought-And-Paid-For Journalists, Mecca Germany and The Asylum Industry all landed on the bestseller list, despite the MSM’s boycott of them. The author worked for years on his Facebook account as a building block in the effort to break through this monopoly. The 30,000 politically interested citizens connected to it are mostly very active in social media.
They share, comment on and like his messages there, developing an enormous reach in the web, touching hundreds of thousands of people. And this is precisely what the federal justice ministry, Facebook, the leftist Amadeu Antonio Foundation and the Bertelsmann Concern[2] want to prevent.
The bestselling author suspects a direct connection: “Naturally, the timing is not purely coincidental. First I was off for 24 hours, then for three days, and then without warning, on the 4th of July, 2016, complete shutdown for seven days, all simultaneously with posts on the new non-fiction book, Boundlessly Criminal.”
A glance into the table of contents of the book (which I co-authored) reveals why the political and media elite are so nervous and have resorted to open censorship:
- Sex mob of Cologne: the SPD’s omertà squad at work
- Police: Lebanese Clans have declared war on us
- Sharia: Islamic law on German soil
- Status report on Federal Criminal Police: Media delivers falsified data
To name just a few. In researching the book, we used a variety of sources, even examining secret papers of security personnel and speaking with insiders and police officers.
Boundlessly Criminal — A book becomes a political statement
After reading the book, there is nothing left of Angela Merkel’s refugee fairy tale. Lies are made clear and demonstrated, The complicity of the press working in synchrony is shown in specific examples, and the full extent of foreign and refugee criminality is unveiled.
On the strength of its research results, the work directly contradicts to the government’s catastrophic refugee policy and Merkel’s borderless policy. Which explains the establishment’s resistance to the book’s publication.
After the CDU [Christian Democrats, Merkel’s party], the SPD [Socialists] and the Greens have brought state TV — ARD and ZDF — under control and, self-anointed “quality media” like the Spiegel have simply turned off the comment function on subjects such as refugee criminality, the final assault on the freedom of expression of millions of citizens is taking place on Facebook.
I leave the summary to my personally affected co-author, Udo Ulfkotte:
“It is hinted to citizens that there is democracy, freedom of expression and freedom of the press. But oh my, if someone wishes to exercise these alleged rights critically, then the truncheon is pulled out. It is about protecting the elites and maintaining their power. And they have noticed that more and more citizens are waking up and are no longer willing to believe unconditionally in the fairy tale content of the unity-minded MSM. So censorship is no longer covert, but quite openly exercised. Critical voices are simply cut off — and I happen to be one of those rather uncomfortable voices.”
[The conclusion is by way of a call to action and a commercial message — resist by buying the book and putting it on the bestseller list despite Heiko Maas and Angela Merkel.]
Notes:
| 1. | Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection | |
| 2. | Worldwide media, educational and service company |
The Law of Unintended Consequences is that this social media censorship has not eliminated hate speech, but has actually fanned it. People are angry about being denied constitutionally-protected freedom of speech, especially when they state the truth. They’re doubly angry by the subversiveness of their governments pulling strings behind the curtain. The mistrust and fury grows by the day.
Lately I learnt that a friend in Poland had five posts he shared blocked on Facebook, in a week. They ranged from a declaration from Isis that they “want to conquer Rome” (for the umpteenth time), to seemingly-innocuous links supporting the Polish football team at Euro 2016, to stuff about history and Christianity.
Something seems to have changed lately on Facebook – and I’m wondering if this is all thanks to the meeting between Facebook representatives and EU comissioners in early June. (speaking of which – how could such a significant event be so under-reported, by the MSM? )
Does anyone know of a website which collects posts banned from social media, or MSM forums? If not – perhaps it’s high time that such a website was created?
From your keyboard to God’s email.
Anyone foolish enough to put this known Marxist software on their personal devices and expose themselves to the entire planet should expect nothing less.
Absolutely. The answer to this is to vote with your feet. Mass exodus from these social media sites with resulting loss of advertising revenue would wipe the smirk off Zuckerberg et al ‘s faces. Twitter is inane and I cannot see the point of Facebook.
I joined FB simply because my best friend is deaf and uses it to communicate with friends. He had been after me to join for a number of years, and I resisted all forms of social media. I finally signed up, provided misleading personal info (and damned little of that). It helped that my friend is a non-Republican conservative.
I use the site solely to post conservative messages, the primary being attempts to educate however much of the public stumbles across my pages in the true story of islam, and how isis is the perfect expression of islam as commanded by the qur’an and hadiths. I also enjoy posting whatever articles I can find that show the hypocrisy of the “MotherZucker” as I label him.
So far I’ve been ignored, as I don’t have much of a following, but I have been able to open a few eyes concerning true muslims and islam. (I refuse to capitalize anything having to do with islam, as that would afford it respect that it does not deserve.)
As much as possible, we should use the Left’s own tools against it. Just be certain to limit your personal info to a disposable email address, with what ever else you provide being fake or misleading. Works for me, anyway.
We need more information about a Facebook alternative for political pages. In some ways, I’d like to keep my facebook account as just a comfy, apolitical chat site for friends and family. If they kept a strict policy against ALL political speech that would be fair.
But places for political pages are needed too. I guess this is one of them :).
Also most of my friends, even gay ones, are hopelessly pro-multiculturalism etc. If one points out that islam doesn’t really agree with most of their values, one gets shot down immediately. I just gave up – let realities teach them the hard (hopefully not too hard) way before it’s too late :(.
I think Udo Ulfkotte means to say “Criminal without borders” because the borders in Europe are porous –to say the least – criminals can get into European countries easily…
Best regards
OT
I have translated this article from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.http://www.taz.de/Essay-Linke-und-Muslime/!5317219/
Perhaps you could give a post of its own? It’s by a reformist muslim who does define some of the problems of islam and who is trying to get support from the left. This one at least has strong prejudices against AfD and PEGIDA – unjustified in my opinion.
Still, I do think waking more young, Left, Germans up to the extremely right-wing truth of islam is a useful first step.
Of course only print this if its legal to do a full-article translation.
Essay: Leftists und Muslims
Ahmad Mansour
We Aren’t Your Stuffed Animals
The left-liberal movement has trouble with critical Muslims. It sees itself as protector of conservative Muslims and thus turns them into victims.
The woman wished to remain anonymous when she recently wrote to me; a staff member of a youth service. She was helpless. Her service knew of cases in which violence belongs to a ‘traditional upbringing’ in families with a ‘migrant background’. Small girls and boys had bruises, had been cowed with threats and trained to ‘obedience’. But the staff members at the youth service have to deal with parents and children in a ‘culturally sensitive’ way and not necessarily step in, although it was clearly a legal requirement. Her letter stated „That’s not alright, is it?” , as though she wanted an OK from me for something that is as clear as glass in human and legal terms: step in, of course, no matter where someone is from.
What the staff member of the service wrote to me is not unusual. I get hundreds of such letters. Teachers and social workers describe the dilemma they find themselves in: should they consider traditions? Have respect for authoritarian fathers? Care for the honour of girls – and their families – who aren’t allowed to attend swimming lessons? The people writing to me are kind and completely helpless.
Muslims and people with „migration background“ enjoy a special sympathy and solidarity amongst Left, progressive people in Germany. Those want to stand up against racism and prejudices. I am an Arab myself, come from Israel and have lived here since 2004. In my first years in Germany I met many nice people in the left-liberal political wing.
Since I have criticised certain religious content with which I grew up, they aren’t quite so nice any more. Of course their reactions can’t be compared to my ‘internal’ opponents, from whom I receive hate mail. But some people no longer like an Arab such as me.
I don’t fit the cliché
I don’t fit the cliché of those, who only complain about racist prejudices, even though I certainly do that too, but I welcome the democracy in which I live here, and I openly and clearly criticise the denominational narrowness of the Muslim communities in this country. I criticise Muslim confederations such as Ditib or the central council of Muslims [Zentralrat der Muslime] who claim to speak in the name of my religion and for all Muslims in Germany, which doesn’t even stack up statistically.
I work for intra-religious and societal reforms and publically state that much is going wrong in families, schools and society in the way they handle religious fundamentalism and Islamic radicalism.
A network of German Left-liberals and Greens ‘protects’ a majority of Muslims in Germany from the minority of their Muslim critics. What is Left about that, what is progressive? I ask myself. And: are you insane? Or have we become your stuffed animals?
Humanistic criticism of society, and englightenment have a great tradition in the German-speaking sphere. Enlightenment always, absolutely always, involved criticism of reign [Herrschaft]. And reign almost always has to do with masters [Herren], ie. with men, with patriarchy. The great monotheistic world religions pay homage to a patriarchal, punishing God, one of the strongest power factors of a hierarchical, anti-democratic world view.
„Opium for the Masses“
Marx called religion the „Opium for the Masses“. Hegel, Kant and Weber were critics of religion. Freud analysed one origin of the invention of a strict father God as stemming from an immature need to give responsibility to authorities, to submit in a child-like way. The French revolution criticised religion as an instrument of reign and oppression. The student revolts of 1968 also involved criticism of the clergy, of the status of women in the church, of religious prohibition of thought, of concepts of authority and the cruel practices in state and church orphanages. Recently the democratic public has been shocked by the wide-spread abuse of children in Catholic and other institutions, which became known since 2010.
Criticism of religion as an instrument of power by believers and non-believers is a classic of the Left! This criticism belongs in the centre of its foundation. Thus it seems crazy when muslim critics of their own religion are viewed with suspicion by Greens, Leftists and even Social Democrats. Why is our criticism not just as valid?
Beneath a different key signature the Left-Green camp is doing the same as the Salafists, Wahhabists and other Islamic fundamentalists whom we criticise. They want to muzzle critical Muslims. One group silences Muslims in the name of a patriarchal God, the other one because they consider criticism of our religion too offensive: we Muslims are deigned incapable of thinking critically and releasing ourselves from decrepit traditions. But why should that which largely succeeded for other religions through criticism and reformation from within and without – for Catholicism, Protestanism, Judaism – not work for Islam? And why don’t we receive solidarity from the progressives in this country?
Burning Problems
Critical Muslims are refused debate in Germany from two sides: from the officially Muslim associations and from most Left and Green milieus. This is astonishing and should be food for thought. In both camps one refuses to clearly name and deal with burning problems in the Muslim communities.
Amongst others these problems are: the growth of a dangerous fundamentalism that is drawing ever more young people into the terror state of IS, the exclusion of women as second-class people, raising children through the pedagogy of fear, a hostility towards sexuality (simultaneously highly sexualised and made taboo), and a literalism that doesn’t understand the koran in its historic and local context but sees it as dictated by Allah. Thousands of examples show how constrained and unhappy adherence to these concepts makes people.
As long as the Muslim associations – as well as Greens and Left – deny that a traditionally patriarchal understanding of Islam supports fundamentalist Muslims, AfD and Pegida will have the say. The new right claims identification of the problems for itself – and it really does so: in a rabble-rousing and racist way instead of politically enlightening, sociologically clear and analytical of religion.
No Solidarity from AfD
Wise and preventative politics must desire and prompt debate in the middle of society. A traditional understanding of Islam promotes sexual taboos and sexual violence. It has a huge influence on gender interaction. The events of Cologne’s New Year’s Eve have their example in the Cairo Tahrir square and elsewhere. Young men forced into sexual abstinence by ‘religious tradition’ attack women in public. Determining this is not racist but a fact. We, Muslims, have this problem – the critical ones amongst us name it and need the solidarity of democrats in this country. We don’t want solidarity from AfD or Pegida, because that would be none.
An open debate without taboos will lead to solutions, to reflection and better prevention. And it will weaken the radical right and Islamists. It must also become clear to all that Muslims don’t want to be cast as ‘victims’ but want to be citizens with equal rights and duties.
There are many of us critical Muslims. More than you think. In April 2015 I helped found the Muslim Forum Germany [Muslimische Forum Deutschland] in Berlin. We fight for a humanistic Islam, for a debate within the Muslim community. We are journalists, Islam scholars, sociologists, psychologists, and students. And we are all part of this society. Dare to listen to us and discuss with us!
this article was published by the notoriosly green- left Tageszeitung, not by the Frankfurter A Z .The wind is changing, or is it?But you got that right here on gov. What subliminally unites the german left and muslims is their hate of Israel disguised as support for the “poor”Palestinans,a people that miraculously tenfolded its number while being exterminated, but they- the lefties- will be the first to suffer from muslim oppression.I know some of those closely and against their education and knowledge, they are not accessible to arguments of reason.
1. Mark Zuckerberg is a born-again Kapo – and it throws such a dark shadow over Germany’s past that it should be Angela Merkel whose orders he seems to obey, while she follows the orders of Erdogan…..(hint re Erdogan: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem)
2. Udo Ulfkotte is not only highly intelligent and brave, he is also a damn good writer.
3. Stating the obvious: ^^^ these are my personal opinions !
If you consult the UN Draft Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts Articles 4 to 11, private acts can still be attributed to a state if done with its connivance.
I am admin on the Facebook page To Hell With Political Correctness. Despite repeated 30 day bans imposed by Facebook it has 88,000 followers with a reach of 4.5 million – 7 million, and a weekly engagement of 350,000-650,000. The vast majority of followers are in the UK, but there are over 6,000 in North America.
THWPC attempts to act as an honest news aggregator focusing on PC culture and the relentless Islamization of Western societies – we have posted numerous articles with links to Gates of Vienna.
Despite our best efforts we received another 30 day ban on 6th July and this time Facebook unpublished the page. I’ve appealed and understand that if the appeal is unsuccessful the page will be permanently deleted.
Let me make this clear – not a single post on THWPC has ever encouraged violence nor any form of lawbreaking. Our latest ban is due to our posting an article by Ann Coulter (which is still on her Facebook page) titled This Hidden Fact Predicts Terrorism – http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2016-06-29.html.
One of our most bizarre bans was for our post exposing the hypocrisy, violence, and racism of the Black Lives Matter movement that pointed out how they had become the very thing they claimed to most hate and that they were “the Klan with a tan”.
Facebook always finds fault and accuses the page of breaking their ‘Community Standards’ – a nice warm term but censorious in reality.
We feel depressed over what has happened. If anyone has any advice based on past experience we would love to hear it.
Facebook is fascism. You will never ever get a fair hearing, while those calling for the destruction of American institutions always will. We left them months ago and would advise any sane person to do the same.
Find out if you can sue Facebook under California law for destruction of intellectual property. Also, see if you can find out about a prerogative writ called “quo warranto”. A private person or corporation usurping public authority might be liable in California.
Try this link. A preliminary action against the A-G of California might be necessary to make him protect First Amendment rights. http://oag.ca.gov/opinions/quo-warranto
What’s Facebook?
(I do not have it, and I think my life is the better for that. It is the BIG TARGET of hackers and spies and virus infections. Long ago – even before this controversy – I made a decision to shun all of the mass social media . . . before Twitter was a thing.)
AT LAST: Facebook sued by Israeli group over Palestinian attacks
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36762533
It looks to me like there would be a market for alternatives to facebook, twitter, youtube, google, etc. Even if you could only pull in 10% of what the big boys make that should be a considerable profit. I don’t have a billion or I’d seed some alternative ventures. It confounds me how it seems ALL big tech companies are red-Marxist-socialist and anti American.